Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by enraged_camel | Hacker News Reader

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With great power comes great responsibility.

I'm sorry, but it is true.

It is worth noting that Google did not start charging a monthly fee for Reader. If they had, I suspect the vast majority of users - including API users - would have gladly paid for it. Rather, they pulled the plug completely, and the only reason they did that was because they simply did not give a shit. It was an utterly disrespectful thing to do to users who came to rely on the service.

There's also the fact that Reader crushed most of its competition after it came out[1]. It was like a Walmart that opened smack in the middle of a town - none of the smaller shops could compete with it and they closed. In the case of Reader, this was okay with most people, since it was free at the time. But then Google said, "welp, this isn't making us any money" and shut it down. Too bad the noteworthy competitors were long gone by then. That's the absurdity of this whole thing.

To go back to the Walmart example, it's like a Walmart that comes into town, forces the smaller shops to close, and then leaves town a few years later. Where will the townspeople do their shopping now?

I know it isn't a perfect analogy, but I think it is accurate enough to get the point across: if you come out with a free service and end up displacing everyone else in the market, then you have an ethical responsibility to at least try to continue the service in some shape or form. Start charging for it and explain why you are doing it. Some may complain but most will understand and agree to pay since they have come to appreciate it and rely on it. Or serve ads, somehow. But whatever you do, don't just shut it down citing lack of profits. Because that just makes you look like a tool.

[1]Interestingly enough, while I was searching past HN submissions to find that story, I came across this one from 4 years ago, titled "Is Google Reader next on the chopping block?" The article itself seems gone but the comments are still there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=435555. The comments themselves are chilling, but even more so because of their similarities to the ones on the more recent "With Google Reader gone, is Google Scholar next?" submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434021

So there's a void in the market ready to be filled?

Nope. It's more like Googlewater came into town, made a great deal with the mayor to run the water service. Then poisoned the well and left town. Now no one trusts tap water, but Googlewater is more than happy to sell you bottled water from their vending machines.

Even though it's possible for another watercompany to come in and clean up the well, too many people distrust well water, and hell, all the cool kids are now drinking bottled Googlewater.

I love outlandish analogies like this (I could totally picture the Dr. Seuss-style cartoon in my head), but do people really "distrust" RSS/Atom now?

No, they don't distrust RSS/Atom, they distrust any service that springs up to provide Reader like services. For users who have multiple devices, Reader was an incredibly easy way to sync state. Whether other companies can be profitable providing similar services remains to be seen.

Stripped down to essentials, this would be an online list of URLs, with appropriate auth (and maybe some representation of when something was read?). Such a service couldn't serve adds, but it wouldn't cost as much to run as a G-Reader or NewsBlur. Actually, if the clients were smart enough the described service could just be another RSS feed, which would take pushes from clients rather than polling sites. Either clients or other servers could then integrate this "read" feed with the other feeds.

This separation of concerns makes it clear that more than one trust issue is implicated. I think you're saying that users might distrust a service's permanence (frankly all services should be suspect on this point), but it seems other users might distrust a service's discretion with their reading habits. By separating this aspect of RSS consumption from all others, so that e.g. the really paranoid could just run their own service, everybody would be able to arrange a suitable situation.

> if you come out with a free service and end up displacing everyone else in the market, then you have an ethical responsibility to at least try to continue the service in some shape or form

This is exactly the kind of entitlement the OP mentions. Also, how would you know your product you wanted to release was going to displace everyone in the market? Does this apply only to large companies or is it small shops as well? What if they lose interest or what if they lost users when they add this magically and universally loved paid solution? There is no such ethical responsibility and they shouldn't be because it is ridiculous. Google shutting down Reader might make them tools, but the precedence you're trying to establish with ideology like this is far worse than that.

>>Also, how would you know your product you wanted to release was going to displace everyone in the market? Does this apply only to large companies or is it small shops as well?

This is a funny question because I thought I was very clear in my original post. I said with great power comes great responsibility. The kind of great power I am talking about here is the kind Google has as one of the world's largest (read: richest) and most influential tech giants.

>>Google shutting down Reader might make them tools, but the precedence you're trying to establish with ideology like this is far worse than that.

This is ironic, because Google Reader was shut down not because it cost Google any noticeable amount of money to operate, but because it didn't fit some Google exec's ideological vision. The precedence I'm trying to establish is at least ethical in the sense that it puts the well-being of users first.

>>The precedence I'm trying to establish is at least ethical in the sense that it puts the well-being of users first.

Companies have a responsibility to put the desires of their owners first, and as a public company that generally means profits. This is hardly an ideological vision, but more of a long term business plan, and even if reader was costing them nothing to maintain it still doesn't fit that plan.

Ok, so it's just if Google does it then, because they are the only ones with "great power?" Although "with great power comes great responsibility" is a cool catch line, it's extremely nebulous, especially as presented. What you are saying is that if any company provides a widely used product, say like Instapaper, they are ethical mandated to continue providing it, etc. Why would I create something for fun then, if I'm morally obligated to dedicate to it in the off chance it becomes popular? When can products close down?

Also, your solution is hardly more ethical than theirs, even if it puts the "well-being" of users first. It's just more binding than what already exists. In my opinion, it was perfectly ethical that Google gave its users a good head's up to the situation and that they even provide a way to find other services that might replace Reader. It's not like it randomly stopped existing one day or like they promised it would always be there. No moral code was broken and no ethics or rights were trampled on. It just sucks and you have every right to be upset. To be a proponent of "you either support it forever in some way or you're (ethically? morally?) evil" isn't really helping though.

>>What you are saying is that if any company provides a widely used product, say like Instapaper, they are ethical mandated to continue providing it, etc. Why would I create something for fun then, if I'm morally obligated to dedicate to it in the off chance it becomes popular? When can products close down?

If you want to close down a product, you can at least open-source it. Which is another thing Google could have done with Reader. It would have given another party the opportunity to pick it up and develop/maintain it.

Honestly, I would be surprised if this wasn't definitely considered by Google before closing Reader. The thing is, when the tool is so closely tied in to Google's internal infrastructure, it would take a large effort to open-source it. IMO, it probably wasn't worth the trouble.

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